2024 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 23, 2024

The GOP's Last Stand: Cruelty as Their Final Weapon

Democrats shine with humanity as Republicans wallow in hate… During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we'd call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956. During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman's neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves "the party of new ideas." They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort. Today, they've pretty much given up on all of that. All they have left is cruelty.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 22, 2024

Freedom Takes Center Stage: Harris and Walz's Secret Weapon Against the GOP

America needs a healthy conversation — a debate, even — about freedom. And Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have kicked it off… When President Biden was running for re-election, he repeatedly talked about the dangers Trump and his neofascist buddies in the billionaire class represent to "democracy." Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, on the other hand, are using the word "freedom." All this week here at the DNC, people have been enthusiastically holding up signs proclaiming "freedom." The word "democracy," while not altogether avoided, has been largely absent both from the signage and the presentations of the various speakers.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 21, 2024

Down with the Kings: SCOTUS’ Presidential Protection Must Go

It's supported by more than half the Democrats in the Senate, along with independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King; not a single Republican had the courage or patriotism to sign onto it…. Republicans this week asked the Supreme Court to throw 40,000 Arizona voters off the voting rolls. This is not the sort of case the Framers of the Constitution meant for the Court to be deciding; for the past few decades, since rightwingers took over the Court, it's been regularly overstepping its charter. Similarly, Donald Trump's criminal attempt to overthrow our government on January 6th is now back before Judge Tanya Chutkan's court, although whatever decision she renders will instantly be appealed by Trump's lawyers back to his friends on the Supreme Court. Tragically, justice will be a long time coming. And now Senator Chuck Schumer and Congress want to do something about it. When the six corrupt and well-bribed Republicans on the US Supreme Court gave Donald Trump immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed while president, they not only "broke" the law but defied the Constitution itself. This offense to our republic's rule of law demands reversal, and Congress, at the moment, is the only venue where that can be done.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 20, 2024

Is the "Reagan Revolution's" Attack on America's Middle Class at an End?

Let's hope the damage Republicans have done over the last four decades isn't so severe that America can't be brought back from the brink of chaos and desperation… Here at the Democratic Convention, speaker after speaker is pointing out how the Biden presidency and the Harris/Walz campaign are rewriting the economic rules of our country in an effort to bring back the middle class. As we stand at the edge of the end of the Reagan Revolution, an end signaled by one particular phrase in President Biden's speech early in his presidency (which I'll get to in a minute), its really important that Americans understand the backstory. Reagan and his conservative buddies intentionally gutted the American middle class, but they did so not just out of greed but also with what they thought was a good and noble justification.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 19, 2024

The Dark Side of the Tradwife Movement

How GOP Policies are Forcing Women into Submission and Putting Lives at Risk Josh and Amanda Zurawski thought they had the American Dream going for them; they'd gotten married a year earlier and bought a beautiful Austin, Texas home with views of a lake and golf course. And Amanda was pregnant; they were looking forward to their first child. And then they ran afoul of the tradwife obsession that motivates the Texas Republican Party.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 18, 2024

The Racist Backlash to Brown v. Board - The Hidden History of the War on Voting

The history behind the elaborate techniques that today’s Republican Party uses to suppress Black and Latino votes is rooted in the “Massive Resistance” movement in reaction to Brown v. Board of Education that has also led to systemic resegregation. Although the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were, in theory, supposed to grant equal status and station between Black and white citizens, that is not the case to this day. After the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, which determined that “separate but equal” met the “equal protection” demands of the 14th Amendment, virtually every public school system in America that hadn’t already been segregated along racial lines set out to do so.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 17, 2024

Saturday Report 8/17/24 - Are insults all Republicans have left?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz are leaving Reagan's neoliberalism in the dust as they double down on President Biden's incredibly successful Keynesian economics strategy to rebuild the middle class and invigorate the economy. — Are insults all Republicans have left? Is that why they can't they just let people be who they are and debate policy? — In what has to be the most bizarre attack on Harris yet, Trump says that if she's elected a truly terrible thing will happen: In his own words, "everybody will get healthcare!" — Speaking of idiocy, JD Vance says Amazon gave money to Black people to burn down big retail stores to increase Amazon's profits. It doesn't get weirder — or more racist — than that. — Geeky Science! "We should have better answers by now": climate scientists are baffled by the unexpected explosion of global heating. — Wisdom School Alert! Are You In the "Having Mode" or the "Being Mode?" — Hunter in a Farmer's World Alert! Why It's Important to Develop "Boredom Response Techniques"

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 16, 2024

Are the Morbidly Rich Sabotaging the Very System that Made Them Wealthy?

And now they are "pulling the ladder up" to make it harder for entrepreneurs and small business people to succeed in America. Recently, a reporter spoke with one of the chief architects of Project 2025 using a hidden camera and microphone and learned they're still in tight with Trump, still planning to run his administration if he's elected, still planning to gut the guardrails America has placed around capitalism over the past 100 years, and even planning to "pull the ladder up" to make it harder for entrepreneurs and small business people to succeed in America. Their plan relies on a major reinvention of modern capitalism and is being pushed by people suffering from an identifiable metal illness. To see how they're hoping to pull this off, it's important and necessary to first understand that there are two types of capitalism: raw and regulated.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 15, 2024

Will the Morbidly Rich Ever Go Back to Being Good American Citizens?

With the election of 1980, Americans — most unknowingly — chose great wealth over democracy, oligarchy over a middle class, billionaires over working people. Twenty-two years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote for The New York Times Magazine about the era in which he and I both grew up, when the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich ran between 74 and 90 percent... Back then most business people avoided politics, preferring to stick to running their companies; in large part this was because when the rich seized political control of America in the Roaring 20s they crashed the economy so bad they were shamed into staying out of the political arena.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Aug. 14, 2024

Billionaire Dreams, Middle Class Nightmares: How Trump & the GOP Turned Hope into a Billionaire's Fantasy

When Republicans talk about the American Dream, what do they mean? And how does their view of the American Dream differ from that of that of Democrats? Donald Trump and JD Vance, like most politicians from both parties, love to invoke the American Dream. When billionaire Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2015, he said: "Sadly, the American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." When multimillionaire hedge fund manager JD Vance accepted his nomination for vice president at the RNC, he similarly said: "Some people tell me I've lived the American dream, and of course they're right. And I'm so grateful for it." But when Republicans talk about the American Dream, what do they mean? And how does their view of the American Dream differ from that of that of Democrats?